Thursday, April 26, 2012

I been outed several times by several individuals as being part of the D&D Next Playtest so it is a bit of an open secret. I can't comment about the mechanics of the rules. It is hard to find anything concrete to say because of the NDA. Hence the lack of blog posts.

Of the two the latter I think is more important as finally people will be have something concrete to talk about. While I appreciate the passion that went into the various Wizards columns, they are so vague that people are reading whatever they want to see in them. With the a public playtest the conversations can be based on something concrete.

As for Monte Cook resigning I wish him the best of luck. I don't have any insider information to share.

So while I can't comment about the mechanics, I do have some observations to share about my experience with the playtest.

1) The initial playtest was a complete game. It definitely not the
complete D&D Next rules. It covered basically what the older
edition basic set covered.

2) They have elements from nearly edition but D&D Next its own thing.
3) There is one new element that I really like and I think that will be the element that defines D&D Next.
4) The playtesters have only seen the core of the game so far.
5) I had no problem running the D&D Next playtest the same way I run my Swords & Wizardry/ Majestic Wilderlands campaigns.
6) Everybody will find something to complain about in the rules. It won't be what they are complaining about now.

And the most important observation, it was a lot of fun to play!

So hopefully the open playtest will allow us to speak more freely. At which point I should have some things to share.

Although I'm not into D&D Next, I hope players of the new edition find what they thought was lacking in the 4th edition which was too much videogame-y and streamlined for my zone of comfort. Perhaps Wizards has learned from their past mistakes. Whatever Monte Cook's split with the design team means to the game only those who playtested the game can tell.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.